Previews

Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz

Those lovable monkeys and their colorful spheres come to Nintendo's new home console.

Spiffy:

Party games don't take too long to figure out with Wii controller and are quite fun, especially Monkey Hurdle.

Iffy:

We need more time with the single-player game to get a feel for it; something's still not quite right.

As a franchise, the Super Monkey Ball series has enjoyed success as a cult favorite among gamers in Sega's post-Dreamcast years. Debuting as a GameCube launch title, both the first game and its sequel enjoyed great success on Nintendo's system. Eventually, installments were ported over to PlayStation 2 and Xbox. Recently, Sega released a new installment, Super Monkey Ball Adventure, which was developed by UK-based Traveller's Tale. Quite frankly, it paled in comparison to its predecessors. Now, headed by original game producer Toshihiro Nagoshi, the game is back in the hands of its originators in time for the Nintendo Wii launch later this year.

We got a chance to try a few stages of a 70% complete build of Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz in Leipzig, and while it was rather fun to play, the nature of the Wii hardware makes it a little tough to decide whether the difficulty in playing the game lies in the toughness of the SMB franchise or the sensitivity of the Wii controller itself. Either way, it was a bit of a struggle to make it through the first few stages.

We got to sample roughly three puzzles out of seven stages, plus a boss battle, which is new to the series. During a few of the stages, we discovered that in this new game, our simian pals now have the ability to jump, with a touch of the A button on the Wii Remote. Part of the difficulty seems to lie in the way that the ball rolls. A tilt of the wrist to the left sends AiAi (or Meemee, or whoever) to the left. A nudge downward sends the ball rolling forward. Of course, a tilt right will push the ball in that direction. However, when we missed a banana, we found it very difficult to turn around without throwing the entire control scheme out of whack. It seems that the Wii is very sensitive to movements in this game. Again, we're not sure if it's the game itself or the hardware, but it's really going to take more than a ten-minute demo to truly understand the feel and mechanics of playing on this machine.

The boss battle adds a new and interesting dynamic to the game. While older games relied simply on a progression of stage after stage, the addition of bosses lends a sort of finality or at least a progress mark for gameplay. In the demo level, AiAi went head to head with a bald, multicolored vulture. The method for beating it involved rolling around and jumping on its head. Easier said than done, though. Not only will players have to deal with taking damage, they'll have the constant danger of fallouts to sweat. Throw in the weirdness of using the Wii Remote, and it's a daunting, though not impossible challenge. Thankfully, (in a rare gesture) Nagoshi and company have made things a little easier than they might have in past titles. Even if the ball falls off the stage, the damage done to a boss will stay, even if the player loses a life. It's a good way to balance out the gameplay of a series that's been known for being both enthrallingly fun and follicle-yanking in its difficulty.